Principal AI Engineer (Charlotte)

A leading financial services organization is seeking a senior technology leader to help drive the modernization of its financial crime, fraud, and risk management technology platforms. This individual will play a key role in defining technical strategy, architecture, and engineering standards for next-generation solutions that leverage artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, and cloud technologies. The role combines strategic leadership with hands-on engineering responsibilities and requires close collaboration with business, risk, compliance, and technology stakeholders. The ideal candidate has deep experience designing large-scale enterprise platforms, a strong background in modern software architecture, and practical experience implementing AI-enabled solutions.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Define and guide long-term technology strategy for risk and compliance platforms.
• Lead architecture and design efforts for modern AI-enabled applications and decisioning systems.
• Establish engineering standards, architectural patterns, and technology best practices.
• Review and provide guidance on scalability, security, resiliency, and performance considerations.
• Serve as a senior technical advisor across multiple teams and initiatives.

AI & Advanced Analytics

• Design and implement AI-driven solutions that improve operational efficiency and decision-making.
• Evaluate and leverage modern AI technologies, including large language models, intelligent automation, knowledge retrieval, and workflow orchestration.
• Partner with data science and engineering teams to deploy machine learning and AI capabilities at scale.
• Help establish governance, monitoring, and operational best practices for AI-enabled applications.

Engineering & Delivery

• Contribute to solution design, prototyping, and proof-of-concept initiatives.
• Review and guide development efforts to ensure high-quality, maintainable solutions.
• Mentor engineers and foster engineering excellence across the organization.
• Promote automation, DevOps practices, testing, and continuous delivery.
• Help resolve complex technical challenges in large-scale enterprise environments.

Platform Modernization

• Lead modernization initiatives focused on cloud-native architectures and scalable platforms.
• Design microservices, APIs, event-driven systems, and enterprise integration solutions.
• Support the evolution of capabilities related to risk assessment, monitoring, case management, reporting, and data processing.
• Drive adoption of modern engineering practices and cloud technologies.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Collaborate with business, risk, compliance, operations, and technology leaders.
• Translate business objectives into scalable technical solutions.
• Communicate technical strategy, architecture decisions, and modernization roadmaps to senior leadership.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering, architecture, or technology leadership experience.
• Proven experience designing and delivering large-scale enterprise systems.
• Experience leading architecture discussions and influencing technology strategy.
• Strong background building cloud-based and cloud-native solutions.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and executive audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing or implementing AI, machine learning, intelligent automation, or large language model solutions.
• Background within banking, financial services, risk, fraud, compliance, or related regulated industries.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management abilities.
• Experience leading technical teams and mentoring engineers.